Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) vs DeepSeek V3.1

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) finishes one point ahead overall, 36 to 35. That is enough to call, but not enough to treat as a blowout. This matchup comes down to a few meaningful edges rather than one model dominating the board.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)'s sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 38.5 against 32.9. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is Terminal-Bench 2.0, 39 to 29. DeepSeek V3.1 does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while DeepSeek V3.1 is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use.

Quick Verdict

Pick Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) if you want the stronger benchmark profile. DeepSeek V3.1 only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

38.5

DeepSeek V3.1

32.9

39
Terminal-Bench 2.0
29
41
BrowseComp
39
36
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

15.2

DeepSeek V3.1

14.8

24
HumanEval
25
17
SWE-bench Verified
13
16
LiveCodeBench
15
14
SWE-bench Pro
15

Multimodal & Grounded

DeepSeek V3.1

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

33.4

DeepSeek V3.1

39.5

28
MMMU-Pro
35
40
OfficeQA Pro
45

Reasoning

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

42.1

DeepSeek V3.1

40.7

32
SimpleQA
31
33
MuSR
29
70
BBH
61
44
LongBench v2
46
47
MRCRv2
48

Knowledge

DeepSeek V3.1

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

30

DeepSeek V3.1

30.5

30
MMLU
33
29
GPQA
32
27
SuperGPQA
30
25
OpenBookQA
28
54
MMLU-Pro
53
5
HLE
2
34
FrontierScience
37

Instruction Following

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

70

DeepSeek V3.1

67

70
IFEval
67

Multilingual

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

61.7

DeepSeek V3.1

60.8

63
MGSM
64
61
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning)

47.8

DeepSeek V3.1

44.2

33
AIME 2023
33
35
AIME 2024
35
34
AIME 2025
34
29
HMMT Feb 2023
29
31
HMMT Feb 2024
31
30
HMMT Feb 2025
30
32
BRUMO 2025
32
67
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or DeepSeek V3.1?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) is ahead overall, 36 to 35. The biggest single separator in this matchup is Terminal-Bench 2.0, where the scores are 39 and 29.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or DeepSeek V3.1?

DeepSeek V3.1 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 30.5 versus 30. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or DeepSeek V3.1?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 15.2 versus 14.8. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or DeepSeek V3.1?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 47.8 versus 44.2. Inside this category, MATH-500 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or DeepSeek V3.1?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 42.1 versus 40.7. Inside this category, BBH is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or DeepSeek V3.1?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 38.5 versus 32.9. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or DeepSeek V3.1?

DeepSeek V3.1 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 39.5 versus 33.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or DeepSeek V3.1?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 70 versus 67. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) or DeepSeek V3.1?

Ministral 3 8B (Reasoning) has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 61.7 versus 60.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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